Devarenne Lab

Plant and Algal Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, Texas A&M University

Hem Thapa Gives Talk at ASPB Plant Biology 2016 Meeting

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Hem-Thapa-PlantBiology-2016-2Devarenne Lab graduate student Hem Thapa gave a presentation today at the ASPB Plant Biology 2016 Meeting in Austin, TX. Hem’s talk was about his recent discovery of the LOS enzyme from the L race of B. braunii that was highlighted in his recent publication in Nature Communications.

Other Devarenne Lab members are also at the meeting including graduate students Mehmet Tatli (poster 500-070-Z), Dongyin Su (poster 500-022-Z), and Incheol Yeo (posters 1000-051-Z and 1000-052-Y), and undergraduate student Victoria Yell (poster 500-067-Z)

Paper Summarizing NAABB Research Published

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A paper has recently been published in Algal Research describing the research activities of the The National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB), a consortium of algal researchers trying to better understand algal biology for biofuel purposes. The Devarenne lab was NAABB-Overveiwa member of NAABB and published two papers based on this research; one paper studying the make up of the Botryococcus braunii ECM, and another paper deciphering the biosynthetic pathway for hydrocarbons in the L race of B. braunii.  These studies are summarized in the new NAABB paper in Algal Research.

Paper Published in Nature Communications

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Background information on lycopadiene biosynthesis in B. braunii race LYesterday the Devarenne lab had a paper published in the journal Nature Communications describing some of our recent research on the green microalga Botryococcus braunii, race L. The study describe the isolation and characterization of the enzyme LOS, which catalyzes the first committed step in lycopadiene biosynthesis. The work is the focus of graduate student Hem Thapa’s thesis studies.

The Texas A&M news service also wrote a news article about the study in Enzyme discovery leads scientists further down path to pumping oil from plants

Interestingly, the BBC World Service saw the news article and they interviewed Tim about our work on B. braunii: